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The beginning of the end for German Chancellor Angela Merkel?

Pressure is growing on Chancellor Angela Merkel as a new poll shows that half of Germans would prefer her not to complete a fourth term. But who else could lead her party — let alone Germany?

A majority of Germans seem to have come round to the idea that Angela Merkel's time is drawing to a close. A new YouGov poll released on Wednesday found that 47 percent of Germans would prefer the chancellor not to complete a fourth term in office, while only 36 percent said they would like to see her go another round.

Though it depends of course on whether she does manage to form a government this time round. It may take a while: Preliminary talks on forming a new grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) are due to begin on January 7, with actual negotiations not expected before the end of the month, which would mean a new government might not form until Easter.

But it is by no means a given that this is how things will pan out. The last coalition talks — which were meant to form a so-called Jamaica alliance between Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the Greens, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) — ended in failure in November, with the other parties roundly accusing the pro-business FDP of scuppering the negotiations by moving their policy goal-posts.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

'Kohl's girl' leaves moniker behind

Longtime Chancellor Helmut Kohl gave Merkel her first cabinet post and facilitated her rise. After losing the chancellorship in 1998, his onetime acolyte turned her back and that of their Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on him. Merkel, then CDU secretary general, said Kohl, who had accepted a cash donation from sources he refused to reveal, had hurt the party. The CDU moved on without him.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

Gerhard Schröder - end of a political career

Merkel was Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's undoing in the 2005 election, though his own vanity was also to blame. His Social Democrats (SPD) finished one point behind her conservative CDU/CSU alliance. On TV with Merkel and other party heads, Schröder insisted Germans had made clear they wanted him to stay. The others rebuffed his apparently absurd claim. She became chancellor. He quit politics.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

Frank-Walter Steinmeier - ever the partner

Frank-Walter Steinmeier had been Germany's foreign minister, serving under Merkel, for nearly four years when the Social Democrat challenged her in the 2009 election. Many people said the SPD's heavy defeat was because of his lack of a popular touch. But he bounced back and in 2013 returned as the country's top diplomat, again with Merkel as the boss. He became Germany's president in March 2017.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

Günther Oettinger - out of the way

Eliminating competitors doesn't always mean forcing them off the political scene. Merkel dispatched her party colleague and potential rival Günther Oettinger, premier of the state of Baden-Württemberg, to a top job in the European Commission in 2010. Oettinger had no track record in EU politics and even then was known for sticking his foot in his mouth. He is on his third position as commissioner.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

Roland Koch - left out in the cold

Roland Koch was known in some parts for his friendship with the Dalai Lama, in others for collecting millions of signatures to catapult the government's plans for dual citizenship. The state premier of Hesse was part of a clique of CDU men who never anticipated Merkel's rise, and then were sure they'd outlast her. Koch waited in vain to be offered a job in Berlin. In the end, she outlasted him.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

Christian Wulff - an unfortunate president

Christian Wulff wasn't Merkel's first pick for president, but left in a pinch when Horst Köhler resigned in 2010, party leaders wouldn't to agree to Ursula von der Leyen, now defense minister. The choice of Wulff, the CDU state premier of Lower Saxony who had been rumored to be unhappy in his position, came as a surprise to him, too. He resigned over corruption charges and was later acquitted.

Angela Merkel: Conquerer of political rivals

Peer Steinbrück - right man, wrong time

Merkel had reached the peak of her career by the time the SPD decided Peer Steinbrück should run against her in the 2013 election. She was unchallenged in her party and had come to dominate managing the euro and debt crisis in Brussels. Steinbrück, a finance minister under Merkel and ex-state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, had the expertise to be chancellor, but he had little chance.

Author: Nancy Isenson

'The personnel question'

This week the FDP retaliated against this narrative, with leader Christian Lindner and deputy leader Wolfgang Kubicki both suggesting that the party could not join a coalition with Merkel as chancellor if there were new elections, and questioning whether the CDU could go forward with her at the steering wheel.

"Of course after 12 years in office, Mrs Merkel doesn't want to descend into contradicting her own actions," Lindner told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung at the weekend. "But we want to be a part of a renewal project."

His words were soon echoed by Kubicki in the Funke Media Group on Wednesday, when the irascible veteran politician blamed Merkel for the failure of the Jamaica talks and then offered coyly, "It's up to the CDU itself how it wants it wants to get out of its 30-percent vale of tears." (The CDU has this week been polling at around 33 percent, about the same percentage it won in September's election, which was its lowest result since the first post-war vote in 1949.)

Kubicki and Lindner (left to right) think Merkel's time is up

Kubicki may have had a point when he blamed the chancellor for scuppering the coalition talks. Her governing style, and the reason for her longevity, requires calm, almost passive, compromise within a centrist coalition that holds a comfortable parliamentary majority. A minority government, the only other option currently on the table short of new elections, would leave her having to woo one parliamentary group after another trying to pass new laws.

But who else is there?

But even if everyone — including, maybe secretly, the chancellor herself — senses that Merkel's prime has passed, no one is exactly sure who can replace her at the head of what is still Germany's biggest and most important party.

Kubicki, for his part, had some suggestions about who might represent the next generation of Christian Democrats: the 37-year-old Jens Spahn, a state secretary in the Finance Ministry, has drawn much media attention in the past few months — not least for the occasional provocative statement calculated to get a populist reaction — and looks likely to figure in any future CDU leadership battle.

Then there is 44-year-old Daniel Günther, the new state premier in Schleswig-Holstein, where he is presiding over a Jamaica coalition that was supposed to be the blueprint for its federal counterpart.

Could Daniel Günther be the future of the CDU?

The two men even brought the issue up themselves in a dual interview for the Rheinische Post in the summer, when they speculated openly about the future of the party. "We're seeing — which is historically unusual — that during a CDU chancellorship a new rank of state premiers is being built, who, along with many more young people with government duties, are guaranteeing a fullness of potential for a post-Merkel era," said Günther.

Another name occasionally batted around in the CDU is that of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the 55-year-old who led Merkel's party to victory in the small western state of Saarland earlier this year — though her position in the relative left of the conservative party would see her represent more of a continuation of the Merkel method, rather than a new beginning.

As for Merkel herself, she is currently on holiday with her husband Joachim Sauer, a professor of physics and theoretical chemistry who retired in October. Merkel hesitated for a long time over whether she would run again, or join her husband in retirement — in the end it was obvious that she still had some fight in her.